Context, Commentary & Caring

By Paula Guran
Written March 8 2006
Published: DarkEcho #50

Once upon a time, I've been told, readers could (with perseverance and adequate
funding) manage to read most of the science fiction published. (This probably
included horror and fantasy as well.) If you got into the field yourself, you
could still read everything that everyone else wrote and, chances are, you could
know the most of the people who wrote it.

I'm not sure when, exactly, this era ended, but it has been over a long while
and we should all be glad it is gone if for no other reason than the fact that
the "people who wrote it" in those days were almost exclusively male Caucasian
heterosexuals. Not that I have anything against male Caucasian heterosexuals,
it's just that speculation and imagination has no limits and the world --
current, future, supernatural, or fantastic -- has unlimited points of view that
are best served by diversity of writers.

There was, though, an advantage in readers being able to keep up with what was
being published. They could debate and discuss the relative merits of it all
publicly and privately. Yet, there, too, diversity was lacking. Criticism when
confined to a community tends to mean members of the community are unwilling to
make negative remarks about the work of others in their community. They also
tend to be overly defensive of that community and overlook the efforts of
"outsiders".

In the 1960s, Damon Knight, John Clute and others improved this situation for
the most part, at least among professionals. Knight insisted that genre
criticism be held to the same standards as other literature. Clute called for
his "Protocol of Excessive Candour: a convention within the community that
excesses of intramural harshness are less damaging than the hypocrisies of
stroke therapy, that telling the truth is a way of expressing love; self-love;
love of others; love for the genre, which claims to tell the truth about things
that count; love for the inhabitants of the planet; love for the future. Because
the truth is all we've got. And if we don't talk to ourselves, and if we don't
use every tool at our command in our time on Earth to tell the truth, nobody
else will."

Since those days, sf/f has splintered into a great many subgenera and broadened
past any easy genre definitions. Once splintered, it crossbred and built on what
came before and ever more wondrous fictions have been born.

No one critic can keep up with the field as a whole these days, In fact, it is
often a challenge to keep up with even a single aspect of that field. No matter
who you are you will, by necessity, be blind to a great deal of what is being
published in sf/f. Any reviewer or critic faces tremendous challenges when it
comes to keeping up with context. Valid criticism (or even review) must place an
author's work within the context of previous work as well as within the larger
context of related fiction. Without broad contextual knowledge, our personal
definitions may become too limited to be valid, yet without specialized
knowledge we can't adequately provide the proper expertise an individual title
demands.

Even publications specializing in sf/f with staffs of paid reviewers and
columnists, cannot keep up with the current context of sf/f. Locus, the premiere
review magazine of the field, pays very little attention to horror and young
adult sf/f, paranormal romance, or "commercial" fantasy. Outside of their
forthcoming books and bestseller lists the popular forms of military sf and
media tie-ins are ignored. Locus probably doesn't *want* to cover those areas
but if they did, they -- or anyone -- would be hard pressed to provide the space
let alone the expertise.

In the three days since his debut, there's been considerable chatter about the
New York Time's new sf columnist David Itzkoff [see:
review and
book list].

(That's something the "good new days" provide: the Internet and a chance to
exchange ideas rapidly and to the world at large.)

Underlying Itzkoff's -- or anyone's criticism and review -- is another type of
context: the critic's personal opinion and definitions. In Itzkoff's case his
personal context and expertise are being questioned.

There's also discontent with his style and the persona he is using. That's
another aspect of commentary: Some critics and reviewers stay with one "voice",
others change depending on venue or other considerations.

But that's something else positive about the "good new days", something we still
have in common with the "old days" -- passion. People care about this fiction --
whatever it is -- and they care enough to comment on it and on its critics.